to ten
by RedKetchup
Summary: Ace and Luffy and ten things that matter. It all ends at ten.


**For ten years their lives were intertwined. Then there is after.**

* * *

_1. Contact_

Ace never returns Luffy's hugs at first.

Ace isn't as clingy or as willing to show his emotions as Luffy is though, so Luffy learns and accepts this fact easily.

After all, sometimes when Luffy manages to knot his rubbery, dirt-smudged limbs around Ace, the older boy seems to squeeze one of Luffy's sweaty arms with a comforting hand before he punches his little brother away from him.

It only lasts for a moment, and it's so fleeting that Luffy barely notices, but he does and he figures that maybe that is Ace's way of learning and opening up to change as well.

* * *

_2. Tending to business_

Ace is thirteen when he's struck with some type illness. It lasts a week and he's kept inside Dadan's Country the whole time, but on the fourth day of his illness he overhears worried murmurs through his uncomfortable sleep. He finally wakes and listens to the agitated concerns coming from the bandits lips about how Luffy left to go catch an alligator for dinner by himself.

_Ace thinks of a time when he was bitterly reminded that strength doesn't come from fighting alone in the form of four deep lacerations across Luffy's body and the sight of bear blood mixing along with Luffy's as Ace's pipe sticks out of the bear's throat._

Ace walks out of the house without a word to anyone, and when he returns Luffy is carrying the tail of a gator while Ace holds the head.

Luffy's complaints of how Ace should have left the gator to him fill the air, but when Ace walks through a patch of sunlight filtering down from the canopy of trees above them Luffy grins and laughs.

"Arigato, Ace."

* * *

_3. Admiration_

"But I like my hair the way it is!"

"Shut up, brat! It's nothing but a mess and I'm not going to stand looking at it for another moment!" Dadan snaps back, grabbing Luffy by the ear to turn his head forward.

Luffy makes a noise too high to be a whine and too annoying to be anything else, really, but Dadan just bites her cigarette and grinds her teeth. She curses whatever god left her the punishment of taking care of these ungrateful boys, and she's sure to throw Garp's name into the mix quite a few times as well.

Luffy squirms between her legs from his spot on the wooden floor. She critically eyes that it needs swept again, and she growls because boys are messy_ little shits_.

Dadan takes the scissors with one hand and grabs a raven strand with the other. She tries to work out the knots between her calloused (_burnt_) fingers, but she gives it up to be a lost cause and just cuts the lock away with a loud snip.

Luffy squirms as pieces of hair fall into his shirt. "Ace has longer hair than me, why can't I have hair like his?"

He cranes his neck back against her inner thigh to send Dadan a pout. She stares into his brown eyes with her own, but she snorts and presses his head forward again so that her resolve doesn't melt under his gaze.

It really isn't fair, but she doesn't care.

"Because Ace is Ace and you're his stupid, little brother. Now hold still, dammit!"

Luffy moans and Dadan's lips quirk upwards even though she doesn't want them to.

* * *

_4. Laughter_

Ace splutters and rubs at his face furiously. His left ear is filled with mud, and his skin and clothes are smeared with it. His shoes are stuck in the pit of mud he fell into, so he feels the sun-warmed, sticky mixture seep between his toes.

Luffy is on the ledge above him, howling with giggles and snorts and laughter. There are tears of mirth sliding down his little brother's face, and some catch when they slide over the uneven skin of his scar.

"Y-You should have seen your face!" Luffy _literally_ cries.

Ace glances over to the other side of the pit to see the other ledge that they had jumped from. He had somehow missed the jump between the two ledges and landed into the mud pit.

...Ace had somehow missed the jump, and _Luffy just stood there and laughed_.

Ace yanks his shoes out of the mud and growls, "C'mere you little shit!"

Luffy gives a half-yelp that also suspiciously sounded like a giggle at the same time. His dark head disappears from up above and Ace quickly climbs up to chase him.

Luffy is tackled to the ground, mainly because he tripped over a tree root and because he never stood a chance against Ace.

Yet after a minute of punching and hitting Ace begins to catch Luffy's amusement, and he silently scolds himself.

He never stood a chance against that contagious laugh of Luffy's. He doesn't know why he tried.

* * *

_5. Sharing_

Luffy really _does try_ to share the meat, even if he still gets more pieces than Ace, but Ace doesn't mind and instead he just tweaks Luffy's ear.

Luffy hums and swallows another slab of roasted venison.

"You're leaving in a few days," he mumbles thoughtfully, staring up into the starry sky.

Ace takes a swig of the sake in his mug and then he lays flat against the roof of Dadan's Country, the childish name they've given and kept for the bandits' home. Ace thinks about his own country down below and how small it has suddenly become in the past year. He thinks of the ocean, forever stretching out into the distance, and he feels the thrill of excitement buzzing under his skin when he pictures the vast, endless blue that will be above and below him in a mere four days.

Luffy brings a greasy finger over to the tattoo on Ace's left bicep, and although he doesn't touch the crossed out S that is permanently etched there, he traces over it in the air.

Ace watches while he does this.

Luffy suddenly brings his eyes up to met Ace's and his face breaks into a grin.

Ace knows that Luffy is just as excited for him as he is himself, and he can't even begin to think about how happy that makes him feel.

* * *

_6. Today_

He wakes up at dawn, Luffy's body pressed close to his, breath in his ear. Ace swivels his head to look out across the dew-covered grass outside of his country. He hears morning birds chirping and feels Luffy's snores vibrating against his back.

Ace sleepily feels warmth against his face, and he has to squint when a burst of light fills his vision. He blinks and sees the sun peeking out from over the tops of the trees. Ace watches the light reflect off the lush green of the leaves, and the thick clouds up above have a fine pink color.

"Mm... Ace, wait up," Luffy mumbles as the sun kisses the crown of his head.

Ace grins.

_Today._

* * *

_7. Finally_

Luffy laughs and laughs as he sits in his tiny boat, feeling it bob along the waves. He thinks of long afternoons and warm memories filled with promises, and he imagines a future of new adventures and even warmer memories.

He thinks of things unknown and the fact that he as a hat to return, nakama to find, a life of freedom and treasure to look forward to, and a brother to actually beat for once.

He laughs louder and it almost sounds like Gramp's bark of a laugh for a moment. It startles a pair of seagulls flying above, and they go flying off in another direction.

Luffy breathes in the sea air and grins.

_Finally._

* * *

8. _Understanding_

Ace is Ace and Luffy is his stupid, little brother, so it's no surprise that he managed to make it to Alabasta with a marine hot on his tail. It's even less of a surprise that Ace steps in between the two without any hesitation.

Ace tilts his head back, flames licking the air and spreading from his body, to look at Luffy with a smirk. The blank look of his brother's face slips off to be replaced with a grin.

Ace learns and Luffy does, too. Ace now knows that his worries were meaningless just by seeing the protective circle his little brother's nakama subconsciously make around him. Ace shares a look with Luffy, and just with that mere look stories and adventures and things only the two of them would understand is silently told.

It's a bond that only brothers can share, and it can only be understood by them.

* * *

_9. Lesson Ends_

Ace never returned Luffy's hugs for the longest of time. He would make other ways, different methods, of expressing his unconditional affection. He grew older though, and eventually Ace was willing to let Luffy cling and hold onto him like the affectionate person he was.

But this time, this last time, Ace can't do anything. His fingers won't even twitch, but it wouldn't matter because he can't even feel anything anymore, and that defeats the point. An embrace is something you share, and at this moment, this very brief moment, it's merely Luffy clinging and supporting Ace's slowly dying body.

Except it's different because Ace learned and he no longer has any reason to hide away emotions or desires.

So one...one arm is across...the back of Luffy's shoulders. Words leave Ace's cracked, bloodied lips...words that Ace has never been able to find or comprehend until now, and he tells his little brother the most important thing he has to say.

Because Luffy has loved and loved and loved Ace, and Oyaji and his nakama have loved him, so the most he can do is offer his love in return.

Luffy doesn't understand or see this love, though. He feels the body of his elder brother, the one who knows his weaknesses and his wants and his promises more than anyone else, slip through his bloodstained, (_always and forever bloodstained_), hands and slap against the cold ground.

He feels his chances and his hopes and his heart falling to pieces, cracking and shattering and crashing into fragments on the ground with his brother's body.

* * *

_10. Nothing_

There is nothing, waves of darkness, maybe, or sometimes a memory that used to be warm but is now achingly painful, to disrupt the nothing, but never anything strong enough to wake him.

He wakes, briefly, but there are no familiar faces or recognizable surroundings. There is no clench of rough bristles of straw between his fingers. There's nothing.

He's afraid to wake up to this, but he's afraid to linger in the dark as well.

He wakes.

There is nothing.

_Nothing._

_..._

_..._

_..._

_..._

_..._

* * *

_11. Lessons begin_

Rayleigh is ready to teach him.

Luffy is ready to learn.

* * *

_12. A different kind of contact_

It hurts the first time, but Luffy begins to find ways to stop the pain from happening.

He uses the move on someone for the first time at Gyojin Island, ten thousand meters below the sea.

The flames lick at his skin, even underwater, and Luffy feels Ace every moment, in every part of his being. Luffy thinks of his nakama, who understand him and love him as much as Ace did, and as he brings his flames forward he can feels Ace in every part of the way.

* * *

_0. Meeting_

_"Apologize!" Luffy shouts, voice high and whiny yet angry._

_Ace glares, his eyes hiding whatever emotion there may be behind that violent expression._

_Luffy grits his teeth and his eyes stare back, showing every feeling there is to show._

_"This is Ace, he's three years older than you. You're going to be living with these people from now on, so you'd better try getting along," Gramps says, bringing his fist against Luffy's skull as gently as he can, which isn't very gentle._

_Dadan squawks about her sufferings and curses whatever higher being has doomed her to do as Garp pleases._


End file.
